on deaf ears
by kojum
Summary: It's only now, two weeks before Aperture effectively ends her life, that she's finally figured out exactly what kind of hell she's legally trapped herself in. / Caroline, pre-Portal. It's a terrifying thing, coming face to face with the monster you built and hoping it doesn't eat you too.


_"Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure?"_

—Alison Bechdel, _Fun Home_

* * *

When Caroline walks into her mandatory pre-personality transfer consultation with the project's head, the very first thing she's told is that the scientists want to split the procedure into separate sessions with four two-hour-long breaks between them.

"Just to make sure the whole thing goes smoothly," the head surgeon explains to Caroline as she sits across from him in his office, her back straight and face blanched. As he says this, he flips through a thick stack of papers with Aperture's logo and "Experiment 1AA: Personality Mapping Procedure" printed across the top, pausing to frown at some of the papers and write on others. His tone is somewhere between condescending and disinterested and does nothing to slow the steady tightening of her throat and chest. "It's a delicate process and we haven't gotten much of a chance to test it out, so we want to take it slow and steady." He looks up and tries to flash her a smile, but his lips end up in a tight grimace instead. "Wouldn't want any bugs working their way into such a powerful machine, after all."

His face is etched with the lines and wrinkles of months of late nights and years of trained apathy, and there's a disturbing flatness to his expression as he calmly walks her through the procedure. His eyes more or less stay glued to the papers in front of him and his voice doesn't deviate from its clinical coldness even as he describes the moment her mind will be ripped from her body and, more likely than not, her life will end. When he finally looks up and asks if she understands why, exactly, the surgeons and engineers can't do the procedure in one long marathon, Caroline's trying to ignore the cold wave of dread filling up her chest and focus on keeping her calm composure.

"Well, I know that there are benefits to breaking up the transfer into separate parts, Doctor," she says, body tense, "but I'm worried that the period of time in between those parts will be…."

She inhales shakily and makes a point of looking the man in the eye.

"…Unpleasant."

The tremor in her hands starts to worm its way into her voice and her neutral frown twists into a worried scowl. Her breaths are suddenly too shallow and too slow for her galloping heart and her lungs are starting to itch and ache with oxygen deprivation. She has to fight to keep her breathing steady and calm, has to forcibly swallow down the panic clawing its way up her clenched throat, has to scramble to remember all those reasons she used to trick herself into agreeing to this in the first place.

They don't come. It hits her for the first time that she's alone now, truly and utterly alone, and that it's only her controlled exterior and slipping iron grip standing between her and the overwhelming force of the surgeon's apathy. The realization only makes it harder to keep all the pieces of her composure from falling apart.

"—afraid of, ma'am." Caroline tries not to look startled as the man's voice suddenly cuts in over the rapid pounding of her heart and the white noise buzzing in her head. She straightens up—when did she start to slouch?—and forces herself to focus only on his moving lips and aloof tone. "You'll be on a strong sedative through the whole process."

Just because she'll be sedated doesn't necessarily mean the breaks will be painless, though. Her being on a "strong sedative" just means she can't be a hassle to the scientists and doctors overseeing the transfer. She quickly tells the doctor as much and he frowns, the expression neatly settling into the curves and valleys of his face.

"The people performing the transfer will do their best to make sure you won't be in pain during the procedure. In fact, you'll probably be unconscious for most of it anyway, so whether or not the process is broken up into parts shouldn't matter. Trust me, ma'am, you won't feel a thi—"

"Doctor, my mind is getting _torn out of_ my body," Caroline snaps. The raw fear's coming to a boil now, running hot just under her skin and threatening to break through the badly mended cracks in the shell of her composure. "I'm inclined to believe that's going to feel like _something,_ no matter how many sedatives and pain killers the scientists pump into me. And the fact that you're sitting there and telling me otherwise makes me wonder just how fit you are to be in charge of this."

He pauses for a moment, surprise flickering briefly in his dead eyes before his frown changes to a tight grin. With a quiet sigh, he looks back down at his desk and starts putting the transfer-related papers back into a large manila folder with Aperture's logo and several red "classified" stamps on the front.

"I think you're getting yourself a little too worked up about this, ma'am." He doesn't bother to look up from his paper organizing to catch Caroline's look of shock. "Your fear might be clouding your judgment a bit. So please, trust me. We know what we're doing. All our research and simulations point to a segmented procedure being the safest option and the one most likely to yield a workable product. I'm sorry if this frightens you, but, unfortunately, this is just how it has to happen."

_This is just how it has to happen._

There's no room for discussion in that statement. There's no room for discussion in anything he just said. A cold shiver goes down Caroline's spine as she realizes that this entire discussion was never meant to be a _discussion_ at all. When her mind puts all the hints and tells together there's a blazing moment of terror that cools and hardens into a cold, focused fury. The tremor is all but gone when she next speaks.

"You're fired."

He freezes, the organized folder suspended in mid-air. His eyes snap to hers and she meets his incredulous gaze with an icy glare.

"I'm sorry?"

"Did I stutter? You're fired. I want your stuff boxed and out of here by five o'clock this afternoon."

His eyebrows raise and he shifts back in his seat. "With all due respect, ma'am, that's…I don't think you can do that."

"You don't think I can do that? You don't think I can _do that?_" She stands up and draws herself to her full height. "This is _my_ company. I can do whatever I think is best for it. And right now, the best thing for Aperture is you getting off my property." Her voice drops dangerously low. "If you and your things aren't out by five, I'll call the police and charge you with trespassing so fast your head'll still be spinning when they close the cell door. Do I make myself clear?"

She holds the surgeon's shocked gaze until he manages to school his expression back into neutral and recite a "yes, ma'am" in perfect monotone, then she calmly turns on her heel and storms out of his office with a clipped "goodbye, doctor" thrown over her shoulder.

Her armor of cold anger is breaking off piece by piece with every step she takes, no matter how hard she fights to keep its soothing focus and determination. Her breathing is shallow and staggered, her heart is pounding so hard she can't hear the crisp click of her heels on the hallway's polished linoleum floor, and the surge of pure dread washing over her is suddenly impossible to rationalize or ignore. A million thoughts are breaking free and running wild in her head, the most disturbing among them a frightened voice whispering _it doesn't matter, they'll do it anyway_ over and over again, and it's only sheer willpower and years of practice with maintaining her composure under all circumstances that allow Caroline to make it to her office with a straight face.

Once she locks the door behind her she immediately collapses into her desk chair and starts rubbing the tears out of her eyes because dammit, the bastard's right. She can't just _do that,_ much as she'd like to. The man's under contract. It'll take weeks of legal meetings and paperwork to get rid of him if Aperture doesn't want to potentially deal with another lawsuit it can't afford. It'll take months to find a replacement for him, even from within Aperture, because of how sensitive and complicated the personality mapping procedure is. And there's the fact that he knows far too much about the entire project in general to be safely fired. The Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System isn't just Aperture's crown jewel, it's the only thing standing between the company and bankruptcy. Letting him go with that kind of information…she might as well just tie a bow on him and write the card to Black Mesa herself.

The tears are coming faster than she can wipe them away, her mouth is trembling from how hard she's working to keep her shaky gasps quiet, and she can't even remember why she ever thought this ridiculous idea would work out in the first place. The whole situation is quickly spiraling into a huge, black pit of uncertainty and she's tied to the pilot's chair, her brain working overtime to find a way out while the end of her life writes itself faster with each second. All the reasons Cave came up with for her to go through with the transfer, all the reasons _she_ came up with for her to go through the transfer…it's so hard to remember how persuasive they were when every fiber of her being is screaming at her to back out of the procedure, to get away from all this as quickly as she can. She can't even think about the transfer without being overwhelmed by a wave of uncontrollable, primal fear, almost all of it backed up by her own knowledge of how, exactly, her company tends to treat its test subjects.

She's been at Aperture for decades. She's overseen hundreds of experiments and cleaned up thousands of messy results. She knows exactly how badly tests can turn out and just how truthful the scientists are when they tell a subject that they'll be fine. That they won't feel a thing. And she agreed to it _anyway!_ She shoved that voice that told her not to do it into yet another box in the back of her mind and signed all the consent and wavier forms the legal department put in front of her.

It's only now, two weeks before Aperture effectively ends her life, that she's finally figured out exactly what kind of hell she's legally trapped herself in. And all she can do is think over and over and over that this isn't right, this isn't _right,_ this is never how it was all supposed to turn out.

Caroline gets about five minutes of trembling shoulders and choked sobs before her internal clock reminds her of her meeting with the head of marketing at three about ideas for Aperture's newly-created Employee Involvement, Connection, and Retention Initiative. Ten minutes and several shuddering sighs later, her makeup is back in place and her voice is mostly steady when she thanks her secretary for coming to try and remind her about the meeting. The only significant remnants of her breakdown are the mascara-stained tissues in her wastebasket and the cold panic in her chest that she's swallowing down as best she can. She's mentally putting herself back together, erasing the thin, wavering whisper and replacing it with strong, confidently thought out plans and legal loopholes and ideas. She won't just roll over and give in to something as irrational as fear. She's been at Aperture for decades. If that time taught her anything, it's that emotions get her nowhere and there's always a way out of a tough situation. She'll figure it out. She'll figure it out.

Caroline repeats all this over and over in her head as she gathers her papers for the meeting. The chanting works, to an extent. When she walks back out of her office, head held high and briefcase in hand, the only (gaping) crack in her pieced together mask is the fading vision of the doctors' silhouetted faces hovering above her paralyzed form, their blue surgical masks and the glint of their flat, cold eyes the only distinguishable things in the operating light's blinding halo.

* * *

**A/N**: Huge thanks to lady-swillmart, MasterPassionCreed, and sachehund for their help and input on this story. It all helped tremendously.

This is the first time I've ever written Caroline _and_ the first time I've consciously tried to write in a recurring theme throughout a story, so I was (and still kinda am) concerned about it all working out to be an enjoyable read. But I'm mostly satisfied with the result, and hope you are, too! Aperture's so incredibly messed up when it comes to ethics and morals, especially in regards to its employees and test subjects, and I had a lot of fun playing around with that concept. Especially in regards to one of the people that was largely responsible for just how ethically/morally messed up Aperture became.


End file.
